


A Piece of the Ocean

by safestorms



Category: The Expanse (TV)
Genre: Canon Divergence, F/F, Misses Clause Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-27 02:14:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17153390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/safestorms/pseuds/safestorms
Summary: Julie Lives AU. What if Julie lives and Bobbie meets her on Earth when she's trying to find her way to the ocean?





	A Piece of the Ocean

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ironed_orchid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ironed_orchid/gifts), [CypressSunn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CypressSunn/gifts).



> Thank you so much to the lovely person who helped give me feedback on this fic and for their support of my writing in general.

It turns out that following the Earther man, Nico’s directions is kind of hard when it’s your first time on Earth and your body still isn’t used to Earth’s gravity. He’d made it seem simple but somehow Bobbie still manages to get lost along the way and ends up having to ask another Earther for help.

The Earther woman she approaches looks different from the others she’d just met. Less brittle, like she’s got steel inside of her. Better clothes. Smooth skin. She’s beautiful. Her black hair shines in the sunlight and her teeth gleam white. This one doesn’t look like she’s lived under a bridge her whole life with hardly any supplies. She looks like one of the takers Bobbie’s grown up her whole life thinking that Earthers are. Not like the people back there. (She’d been wrong about Earthers all being takers - what her society had taught her was wrong. What else did they (she) get wrong?)

“I’m actually headed there as well. Come on, I’ll show you.”

Bobbie stumbles after her, grateful that the Earther woman deliberately slows her steps to match hers, waiting patiently when Bobbie has difficulty with where to put her feet.

“I’m Julie by the way,” the woman offers after a while. “I’m guessing you’re not from around here. This your first time away from Mars?”

The easy way that Julie gives away her name makes Bobbie relax a little. That and how she’s not looking at Bobbie differently for being a Martian. “Yes. I’m Bobbie.”

Bobbie wonders if she wants something in return like the Earther who’d given her directions in exchange for her meds. Or like their leaders who’d questioned her. Everyone on Earth she’s met has had their own agenda. Bobbie’s still trying to figure out hers. She’d thought it was one and the same with the Martian army. Guess she was wrong. Everything’s turned upside down now and she doesn’t know right from wrong anymore.   

“I don’t have any scrip and I gave my meds to someone else already.”

“What?” Julie tilts her head in confusion.

“I can’t pay you for your help.”

“You don’t have to.” Julie’s gaze is kind and it makes her feel warm all over.  The last time Bobbie’s kissed a girl was months ago when she’d been on leave from the army. She’d tasted like how Bobbie thought the ocean would taste like. Bobbie wonders how Julie’s mouth tastes.  “I wasn’t going to ask you for anything in return.”

She  can’t wrap her head around what Julie’s saying. “Why would you help me then?”

To her surprise, Julie laughs. It’s not the kind of laugh though that someone makes when they think something’s funny and they’re amused. It sounds like something escaping. Something being set free that’s been trapped somewhere under her ribcage for a long time.  “Because. You look just as lost as I do. And I want to because you look like you need it.”

“Why would an Earther help a Martian without getting anything in return?”

Julie’s face clouds. “I may have been born an Earther but I don’t identify as one. Not anymore. I hate the privilege I was born in. I don’t want to be a part of any of it.”

Bobbie nods cautiously. “Thank you. For the favor I mean.”

“No problem.” Julie’s next words take her by surprise. “It’s hard, huh? Leaving the place you grew up. Makes you really think about what and where home is.”

“How do you mean?” she asks uncertainly. She feels on edge like Julie’s words have stirred something inside of her. The twisted, tangled-upness she’s been feeling ever since what happened on Ganymede. She doesn’t know what and where home is anymore either because home’s betrayed her.

Julie’s mouth twists, turning up into a wry smile edged with bitterness. There’s something dark lurking under the corners of it, trying to leak out. A pain that looks like it matches something inside of Bobbie. An all too familiar burn.  “You could say I ran away from home.”

Julie stops then. They’re in front of the drainage tunnel that Nico had told her about. Julie’s hand terminal lights up, flashing urgently.  She frowns as she reads whatever message is on it. “We’re here. I’m sorry but I’ve got to go. Just go through that and you’ll see it once you get to the other side. You can’t miss it. ”

Bobbie wants to ask if she’ll be back, if this is the last time she’ll ever see her but the words get stuck in her throat. “Okay. Thank you.”

“I meant it when I said it’s something you can’t miss.”

“What?”

“The ocean. I come here when I need to feel calm. To get lost for a while. It looks like you might need that too. Just a guess. Good luck, Bobbie. It was nice meeting you.”

“You too,” she replies and if there’s something a little wistful in her voice as she’s saying it, well maybe it’s just Earth’s gravity getting to her, making everything seem askew.  Making her fumble for balance.

 

*

It turns out that the ocean’s everything she dreamed of and more.

Bobbie manages to trick the Martian men who are after her into thinking that she’s left the beach but she doubles back after for one last glimpse of it. To say goodbye. She’s still reeling from what Chrisjen had told her.

That it was Mars, her own _army_ that had turned on her and her fellow soldiers, used them as an experiment. Killed them. Her team was _hers_ and Bobbie would have died for them but it turns out that the Martian code of ethics that Bobbie swears by, the loyalty she pledges her fellow soldiers isn’t something that her superiors or her authorities, her _country_ feels like they owe her too.

Bobbie doesn’t know how long she sits there until she hears someone coming down the beach towards her. She jumps up instinctively but it’s not her people this time. It’s Julie again.

“You’re back.”

 

*

 After her disastrous phone call with her father, Julie decides to go to the beach for the hell of it, a bottle of wine in hand, his words still ringing in her ears.

 _-You ungrateful selfish girl_ . _You should be ashamed of yourself. No daughter of mine goes whoring for the Belt._

\- _Is that why you sent someone to kidnap me and bring me back, Daddy? Is  that why you tried to test the protomolecule on me? Your own daughter?_

She hadn’t meant to call him ‘Daddy’. It’d slipped out - a long-forgotten word from a lost time. She shouldn't have answered his call at all. She may be fighting against him to alleviate the damage he's done to the Belt with his protomolecule but sometimes she still finds it hard not to respond to his toxic games, his manipulative attempts at bringing her back under his control. Cutting him off entirely is a work in progress especially when what he's done to her is a still-festering wound.

As she walks closer to where the tide's coming in, she sees the girl again from earlier, the one who’d looked just as lost as how Julie feels on the inside.

“You look like hell,” she greets her, dropping down on the sand besides her and bumping her shoulder with hers. Julie doesn’t know why but even though they’ve known each other for less than an hour, sitting here talking with Bobbie feels more comfortable than with pretty much everyone else on Earth. It’s like they’ve known each other for years.

“So do you,” Bobbie replies.

Julie grimaces. “Thanks. Feels like it too. I should know. I’ve been there. That shit stays with you.”

Bobbie frowns. "Yeah, I know what that's like."

Julie offers the bottle to her and watches Bobbie’s face transform in delight as she drinks it.“Wait till you see what the ocean tastes like.”

“What?”

“Don’t tell me you were going to come all this way and not go into the ocean?”

“I can’t swim.”

“We’ll just stand here on the beach where the tide’s coming in. Don’t worry, I won’t let you drown. Come on.” Julie offers Bobbie a hand and Bobbie takes it tentatively but lets herself be dragged along. Bobbie follows her as she rolls her jeans up and wades in, mimicking her exactly like a good Martian soldier. The water feels deliciously cool against her skin, the waves frothing up to just below her knee. Julie draws in a deep breath as she watches the tide rolling in, wave after wave, like the sea itself is coming to greet them.

“What does it taste like?” Bobbie asks, half in wonder, half in hesitation.

“Like salt mainly,” Julie says, thinking it over. “Like something made of different stuff than us humans with our whims and passions, our greed, our ugliness.” She thinks about the science experiment she’d barely escaped from, one created by her own father with human beings, his own _daughter_ as a test subject. She thinks about men who lie and hurt and betray. About her tree in the backyard of her family home that she'd climbed as a little girl. It feels like there’s blood in her mouth now, like saltwater, an ocean of it.

Bobbie scoops up some water in her hand and flicks out the tip of her tongue to taste it. She yelps in surprise, spitting it out. “I didn’t think it’d taste so salty. It tastes like...like tears.”

“Seawater has healing properties. But you shouldn’t drink too much of it. It’ll make you feel sick. You can become dehydrated and get a stomachache. And besides, we channel our waste into the sea. Can’t have one fucking resource that Earthers don’t end up destroying.”

“I used to dream of seeing the ocean,” Bobbie says. “I’m glad I finally saw it. I have to go now though. They’re looking for me.”

“Look, if you’re in trouble, maybe I can help.” She gives Bobbie her contact details. “Juliette Andromeda Mao. Don’t you forget that.”

“I won’t,” Bobbie promises solemnly and Julie can see the soldier in her. "You're hard to forget though."  

Julie reaches over to squeeze Bobbie’s hand, lace her fingers through hers and it feels a bit like she’s back on the _Razorback_ again, the adrenaline rush of winning a race coursing through her veins, flying high. And for just a moment, she thinks she could belong here. Here, in the linking of their fingers, where skin meets skin, a temporary refuge from the storm. 

 

*

Later, when Bobbie finds Julie’s _Razorback_ and flies it off her father’s ship, she sends her a message as soon as Chrisjen and her get to the _Roci_.  “I found something of yours that I think you’d like back.”

When Julie comes to claim her Razorback, there are tears in her eyes as she looks at her ship. “My girl,” she murmurs, her gaze sliding to Bobbie. “How did you?”

“It’s a long story,” Bobbie says. She fills her in on the basics. Figures they have all night to flesh out the details.

Julie reaches out, looks at the Razorback then at Bobbie in wonder. “I feel like I’m home.”

Bobbie glances at her then. Out here in space, it feels easier somehow to speak. To voice truths. To put things without names into words. After all, the Bobbie Draper of a few months ago would never have dreamt that she’d be here floating in space aboard James Holden’s ship, guarding an Earther government official who used to represent everything she’d loathed. “I think I know what you mean now. About home. About how it changes. Is that why you left?”

Julie nods.  “I wanted to help the people in the Belt. Because what's happening is unjust and I can't bear to just stand by. And I can’t, I won’t be like him. Oh he’d _love_ to, but he can’t control me anymore. I won’t let him.”

“Your father?”

“Yes. I’m sorry you had to meet him.” Julie tosses the words out like they’re stones caught in Earth’s gravity weighing her down. Bobbie feels a strange urge to catch them and throw them away, to help this woman ( _Julie_ , no  longer a stranger) see how light she can be without them. Like floating in space. Maybe even like floating in the ocean like how she’d seen Earthers do in movies.

“I’m sorry for what he did to you.”

Later in Bobbie’s cabin, when they kiss, she learns what it’s like to redefine home. To reclaim their bodies for themselves from others who’d carelessly sought to use them for science experiments. Julie tastes every bit as good as Bobbie thought she would and maybe even a little better.

Like their own little piece of the ocean out here in space.


End file.
